BY ALISON DELLIT
In sentencing One Nation founders Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge to three years' imprisonment, Queensland judge Patsy Wood told the court that the case had "substantially damaged" Hanson's political career. If only she was right.
The Brisbane Courier Mail's August 24 poll results — which showed that political support for Hanson skyrocketed to 21% of Queensland voters straight after her conviction — may have been a nasty shock to some, but it shouldn't have been.
You can't defeat right-wing politics with bureaucratic manoeuvres. Racism can only be effectively fought through building a political movement, based on convincing and mobilising people, that can expose racist myths and defend the rights of those who suffer under them.
Tony Abbott and the Liberals, however, were not interested in defeating the politics of racism, just in disposing of an embarrassing electoral rival. Their strategy appears to have backfired, possibly re-invigorating Hanson's image as being — ridiculous as this idea is — anti-establishment.
Hanson was useful to the Coalition government for a while — she shifted the terrain of mainstream politics to the right, recycling and breathing new life into the many racist myths that have underlaid the "Australian ethos" for two centuries.
Prime Minister John Howard was careful never to disagree with those myths — that Aborigines are lazy, Asian and Middle-Eastern migrants are violent and all non-whites get "special privileges" in Australia — since they helped get public support for his government's racist policy agenda.
However, Hanson's crude racist bigotry kept provoking protest, including the 1998 mass high-school student walkouts against racism. She had become a liability, past her use-by date. She was in danger of provoking a movement that would shift the political terrain to the left, and expose many of the lies the Coalition based its immigration and Indigenous affairs policies on.
It was around this time that Abbott set up the corporate slush fund to bankroll a civil suit aimed at getting One Nation's electoral registration withdrawn — which he presumably hoped would cause the undemocratic, squabble-ridden outfit to fall apart.
Abbott got lucky — One Nation had contradicted itself on its own membership structure in applying for electoral registration in Queensland. The civil suit succeeded in getting One Nation's registration in Queensland overturned.
Then, despite neither Hanson nor Ettridge obtaining any financial or personal benefit from One Nation's irregular registration, as Justice Wood acknowledged, they were charged and convicted of fraud under the state's criminal code.
It is absurdly difficult to register a political party throughout Australia — unless the party has a sitting member of parliament. Had One Nation had an MP in Queensland before the election, it would have legally received registration with its constitution.
A Gary Morgan poll released on August 28 found that a bare majority — 55% of voters — believes Hanson is guilty of "electoral fraud" (a whopping 23% were undecided), and just 13% believed she should have been jailed. Sixty-three per cent disapproved of Abbott setting up the slush fund.
Most of us would like to see more politicians in jail — for lying and ripping off working people. But most people's mistrust of the court's decision to jail Hanson comes not from wanting to defend her, but from fearing the implications of charging people with fraud because they failed to fully comply with the regulations for registering a political party.
These stringent regulations are designed to preserve the two-party system. The possibility of being charged with fraud because of fudging electoral regulations ups the stakes for small parties. The precedents set in legally pursuing One Nation — including police raids that seized internal party documents — may well be used to attack the left.
The ABC's election analyst Antony Green, Griffith University political analyst John Wanna and University of Queensland law professor Sure Rantnapala have all warned that the decision could limit participation in the electoral system.
But most importantly, Hanson's jailing has harmed, not helped, the anti-racist struggle and the fight against One Nation.
In the weeks before Hanson was jailed, the Howard government attacked, yet again, the independence of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. In the week following, it threatened to deport Afghan refugees and is introducing regulations that will deny those fleeing persecution permanent protection in Australia.
Racism will not be fought by legal cases funded by slush funds set up by right-wing politicians like Tony Abbott. Racism will be beaten back by political campaigns based upon public protest action — arguably, the refugees' rights campaign has helped reduce the "freeloader" image the corporate media have so associated with asylum seekers, for example. Exposing the "war on terror" as a political cover for the drive by First World corporations and their government servants to plunder the natural resources of the oil-rich Middle East is the best way to tackle the growing anti-Arab racism in Australia.
It is foolish for opponents of racism to look to the police and the courts — which are the key institutions defending the interests of the covert racists who rule this country — to defeat racism. This will be done by building and strengthening the campaigns against racist policies and ideas.
From Green Left Weekly, September 3, 2003.
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